by Joe Hearn | Oct 26, 2018 | Travel
Planning
Tomorrow I get on plane and start a 25,000-mile journey around the world (I’ll share my first stop at the end of this article). The purpose of the trip is to have a little fun and to hopefully inspire and encourage each of you to be intentional and proactive with your own plans and dreams. With that in mind, I thought it would be good to start with something practical. What’s the process I use for trip planning? How can you use it to plan exciting trips before and during retirement? Here’s the process I use:
Start early
Each year, around this time, I sit down to plan our travel for the coming year. Starting early is often a must if you want to make reservations at popular places. It also gives you time to digest trip expenses and coordinate logistics (e.g. time off work, childcare, dog sitter). And don’t underestimate the benefits of anticipation. Booking early also means months of excitement and anticipation for you and your travel companions. Can you book a trip last minute? Absolutely (see also Travel Roulette). But booking early often means more availability, more time to pay, less stress and more anticipation.
Mindset
Repeat after me: “Planning a trip takes effort and it will cost me some money.” Taking a trip is awesome, but planning a trip takes effort and a willingness to spend money, make decisions and even take a few risks. Those things introduce friction into the process that cause many people to quit. Push through this resistance by acknowledging ahead of time that the planning will have its challenges, but it will be worth it.
Where?
Throughout the year I jot down ideas and save articles related to places that look fun or interesting. When I sit down to plan, I whiteboard a bunch of potential ideas and then we talk about them as a family. We highlight several ideas depending on what we’re in the mood for, our budget, time frame and type of trip (e.g. outdoor, city, learning, relaxing, strenuous, group trip, etc.).
Basic Research
Once we have a list of places, we start doing some basic research. What is the best time of year to visit? What are the main things to see and do there? How many days do you need to do what you want to? What do available flights look like? What lodging options are available?
Initial bookings
Once I’ve done the basic research and have the broad outlines of a trip, I try to get the big things settled. For me, that usually means airfare and lodging. Once those are booked, the trip is real (woohoo!). And by getting them done early, you can take advantage of more availability (especially if you’re booking tickets with frequent flyer miles) and lower prices. As I mentioned earlier, it also gives you time to digest expenses.
Organize
Once you start booking things, it’s important to get everything organized and outlined into a day-by-day itinerary. The easiest way I’ve found to do this is by using the TripIt app. When you get confirmation emails from airlines, Airbnb, rental car companies, and the like, just forward them to TripIt and it instantly creates a new trip for you and organizes all the details into an easy to read itinerary. I can’t say enough great things about this app. There’s a free version, but the paid version is totally worth it if you travel often.
Deeper research
At this point, I usually buy a few books to start doing deeper research about the place we’re visiting. If we’re going to a city, I like the City Guides from Lonely Planet. If we’re casting a wider net, I’ll get the country book by Lonely Planet or Rick Steves and I’ll also usually get something from Eyewitness Travel because the pictures help to give me a sense of the place. I’ll also use the internet to visit tourist bureau websites, blogs, and travel sites like Trip Advisor where thousands of other travelers have written reviews and talked about their favorite things to do at the place I’ll be visiting. As I find things that look fun or interesting, I’ll book them or make reservations and forward the details to TripIt. This includes things like walking tours, restaurants, sites we want to see, activities we want to do, etc. I leave room for flexibility and serendipity, but I try to give the trip enough structure so that we’re making efficient use of our days. Once everything is planned and the departure date nears, I figure out what to pack
Packing
“When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” – Susan Heller
What type of trip? The first step to packing is to think about what type of trip you’re taking. What’s the weather like? What types of things will you be doing? Packing for a ski trip is different than packing for the beach. Packing for a destination wedding is different than packing for a camping trip. Think about what you’ll be doing, what the weather will be like, what kinds of clothes and gear you’ll need and plan accordingly.
Pick a good bag. Your luggage should match your trip. If you’re hiking the Grand Canyon, invest in a quality backpack. If you’re taking a quick weekend trip to celebrate your anniversary, a simple weekender duffel will do. If you’re planning a three-week cruise, get yourself some sturdy luggage with a bit of capacity.
Lay it all out. Lay everything out that you plan on taking and look through it with an eye on paring it down to the essentials. Do your outfits mix and match? Can you pare back bulky items, like shoes? Are you taking things that you can just as easily buy at your destination? If you take too much stuff, it’s stressful. If you don’t take enough, it’s stressful. Really think through what you’ll need and what you’re likely to use and try to strike the appropriate balance between not enough and too much
Pack it efficiently. Once you have everything finalized, pack it up. The goal is to get the maximum amount of stuff in the minimum amount of luggage, without exceeding the 50-pound weight limit that most airlines impose. That means use packing cubes, compress, roll instead of fold, etc. In other words, pack that bag like it’s a clown car.
What I’m taking
One of my inspirations for this trip is the pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly. She approached her editor in 1888 with the idea of turning the fictional account of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days into reality and writing dispatches along the way. All she took with her was the dress she had on, an overcoat, a few changes of underwear, some toiletry items and 200 British pounds. Everything she packed fit into a small handbag. Here’s what I’m taking:
- The clothes on my back (shirt, jeans, belt, shoes, watch)
- A 25-Liter Patagonia Black Hole Backpack
- Two shirts, two pairs of lightweight pants, socks and underwear
- A few toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, floss)
- A lightweight vest and a hat for cooler weather
- My MacBook and phone so I can connect into my office and communicate with clients and people back home.
- An Anker charging block
- A Field Notes journal and pen
- One paperback book (Meditations by Marcus Aurelius)
- My passport, credit card and some cash
I’ll buy anything else I need as the trip progresses. That includes clothes, which I will buy as needed (probably just a shirt here and there) and then donate when it’s time to change. That might sound expensive at first, but it will almost certainly be cheaper than the baggage fees I’d pay if I were checking luggage on ten different flights. It should be a fun and interesting experience and I’m looking forward to talking with you along the way.
The first stop is…drumroll…Hong Kong via Los Angeles. I’ve got some fun things planned, including a visit to a famous street market, a hike called the Dragon’s Back, and plenty of food sampling. I’ll talk to when I get there. Until then…
Be Intentional,
Joe
by Joe Hearn | Oct 19, 2018 | Lifestyle Design, Pursuits, Travel
A few years ago, my family and I took a one month mini-retirement to Ireland and England. Before that trip, we applied for two British Airways Visa cards (one for my wife, one for me). Each card gave 100,000 frequent flier miles for signing up and meeting a minimum spend. We used some of the miles on that trip, but most of them have been sitting unused (dumb!). I recently got an email that said the miles were about to expire, so I did what most people would do. I booked an 18-day, 25,000-mile trip around the world. I’m leaving soon and I’d love to have you follow along.
A bit about the trip
I’ll keep the specific destinations under wraps for now, other than to say I’ll be leaving home and flying west. My itinerary has 10 flights and I’ll be spending time in 4 countries (plus two more for connecting flights). That’s waaaaay more stops than I would normally recommend for a trip of this length, but I’m not really looking at the trip as a relaxing vacation. Instead I’m viewing it as a bit of a combo between a work trip and a lifestyle experiment that will give me some interesting things to write about at Intentional Retirement (as well as our Facebook page). I’m able to connect into my work computer remotely and I have a phone plan that works seamlessly in 170 countries, so I’ll be communicating with clients and working a “normal” day most days. I also have some fun activities booked at each destination, so I’ll be writing about those, as well as about things like how I plan trips, how to pack, demystifying travel, spontaneity, being proactive in retirement, designing your ideal lifestyle, taking risks, finding your purpose, location independence, remote work, overcoming excuses and living an intentional life.
Why?
The expiring miles were a good excuse, but truth be told, the trip has a bigger purpose. My goal with Intentional Retirement is not just to sell books or write articles, but to help people actually make positive changes in their lives. To nudge them from apathy to action. So I hope the trip is fun and interesting, but mostly I hope it inspires you, in some small way, to get your own dreams off the drawing board.
Up next
Next week I’ll post an article or two about how I plan trips and what I’m packing for this trip (hint: almost nothing). Then I’ll hit the road. I’ll be posting articles to the site as I go, but I’ll also be posting some pictures and videos to our Facebook page, so follow along there to see the good, the bad and the ugly of how the trip is going. And if you have any friends who might be interested in following along (or who, like you, want to live an intentional, meaningful life), please email this article to them or share it on social media. Have a great weekend! And as always…
Be Intentional,
Joe
by Joe Hearn | Apr 25, 2018 | Lifestyle Design, Pursuits, Travel
My wife went to visit her sister a few weeks ago in New York. While she was gone, my daughter and I felt like doing something fun, so the two of us went to Washington D.C. to see the cherry trees in bloom. A hundred years ago, either one of those trips would have been costly, dangerous and impractical. Now for a few hundred dollars and a little planning, you can start your day at home and end it a few thousand miles away.
I sometimes take for granted how crazy that is and it illustrates a gradual change that has been happening for decades: The declining cost of distance. Technology has utterly transformed the cost, effort, time and risk involved with getting from A to B. In many cases, you don’t even need to get off your couch. Here are some examples from just the last few decades.
- Email has replaced physical mail.
- Expensive long-distance calls are a thing of the past.
- Video conferencing options like FaceTime and Skype allow us to see and stay connected with those we love.
- The internet has not only put the world at your fingertips, but allows you to have it delivered in 2 days or less.
- Cars have become safer and more fuel efficient.
- Flights have gotten cheaper and more prevalent.
- Services like Airbnb and Uber make travel easier, more enjoyable and less expensive.
This trend will likely continue and the cost of distance will become more and more negligible (think virtual reality, hyperloop, automation, 3D printing and supersonic air travel). How should this affect your retirement planning? Here are a few thoughts:
Live where you want. As the cost of distance continues to decline, location becomes less important. When distance is expensive, deciding where to live often involves some serious tradeoffs. “Should I live by my grandkids in the Midwest or in that laid-back beach town in Southern California?” When distance is cheap, you can afford to choose “both/and” instead of “either/or.” It just takes a bit of money, planning and intentionality.
Don’t get stuck in the past. Take advantage of the new economics of distance to live life and do interesting and fulfilling things both now and in retirement. That’s pretty self-explanatory. Don’t get stuck in the old way of thinking and orient your life around a “distance is expensive” fallacy.
Embrace technology. Look for ways to shrink the cost of distance further. Be the grandparent who is an expert at FaceTime. Be the first of your friends to have a virtual reality headset and use it to “visit” famous museums and faraway cities without leaving home. You might even consider becoming a medical tourist. Need heart surgery or hip replacement? India caters to medical tourists needing those types of procedures. They have some of the best hospitals and physicians in the world and the costs on average are about one-tenth of the cost in the US.
One last thought
Before I sign off for today, I mentioned that my daughter and I saw the cherry blossoms. Part of that decision was inspired by a poem I like by A.E. Housman. His sentiments are similar to our philosophy here at Intentional Retirement, so I thought I’d share it.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
Stay Intentional,
~Joe
by Joe Hearn | Jan 12, 2018 | Pursuits, Travel
For a while I’ve wanted to show up at the airport with no plans, no luggage and no ticket and ask the agent to book me a flight somewhere. I think it would be a fun experiment. Travel roulette. So a few days ago, I sent this text to four of my friends:
To my surprise, three of them took me up on it. We’ll all be at the airport tomorrow morning trying to snag a last-minute seat somewhere interesting. I’ll try to post a few pictures or videos to the Intentional Retirement Facebook page to let you know how it’s going. Maybe it will be fun. Maybe it will be a colossal mistake. Either way it will be memorable.
Enjoy your weekend! And remember. Life is short. Be intentional.
~ Joe
by Joe Hearn | Jul 5, 2017 | Travel
The family and I have been traveling in Iceland for the last few weeks. We had an amazing time (more in a future post), but I was again reminded that whoever said “The joy is in the journey” never spent much time flying coach. If you do any amount of traveling, you know that travel days are often hard. You’re tired, rushed and a bit stressed. In my family, we deal with this in two primary ways. First, we know in advance that travel days are hard, so we do our best to both act and react with an extra measure of grace toward each other and those around us. Second, we have some key tools that help make travel easier. Below are 5 of my favorite travel tools. Click the orange links to learn more.
TripIt: Every trip involves booking things like airline tickets, rental car, hotel, Airbnb, dinner reservations and event tickets. Each of those bookings usually has some sort of confirmation number, e-tickets, instructions, directions and contact information. I used to print it all out and shove it in my carry on. Now I just use the free TripIt app on my phone (available on both Apple and Android devices).
Here’s how it works. Step 1: Book stuff like your flight, hotel and rental car (or anything else for your trip). Step 2: When you receive the booking confirmation email, forward it to plans@tripit.com. Step 3: TripIt automatically and instantly creates an itinerary for your trip with each piece of booking information organized neatly in a timeline. Click on a particular piece of information and it will pull up all the details associated with it. Voila! No more paper printouts.
You can create unlimited itineraries and if you get the pro version of the app ($49 per year), it will also give a number of helpful notifications like flight status alerts, terminal and gate reminders, check in reminders and even a notification when it’s time to leave for the airport. It will also alert you if your flight is delayed or cancelled (usually before the airline does) and will suggest alternate flight times and numbers so you can call the airline quickly and rebook before everyone else at your gate starts trying to do the same thing. This has saved my bacon more than once.
TSA Pre Check: I’m grateful for airport security, but rigorous screening can leave you looking and feeling like you lost a very public game of strip poker. And because it takes time to remove certain items from your bags, take off your belt/shoes/jacket/etc. and get a full body scan, long waits in security lines have become the norm. You can avoid all of this by signing up for TSA Pre Check.
Here’s how it works. Step 1: Go to www.tsa.gov/precheck, fill out a quick application and schedule an appointment at one of hundreds of available enrollment centers. Step 2: Go to your appointment, pay an $85 fee, get fingerprinted and agree to an in-depth background check. All of this only takes about 10 minutes. Step 3: Once the background check is complete, you will receive a letter in the mail with your Known Traveler Number (KTN). Include this number when booking your flight and “TSA Pre Check” will be printed on your boarding pass which allows you to use the Pre Check Lane. That means shorter wait times (usually 5 minutes or less), you don’t need to take off your shoes, belts or light jackets and you don’t need to remove things like liquids and laptops from your carry on.
Bose wireless noise cancelling headphones: As the Grinch said “There’s one thing I hate! All the NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!” The thrum of a jet engine accompanied by the screaming baby in 9C can leave you feeling a bit out of sorts and exhausted at the end of a travel day. Tune it all out with these Bose headphones. They’re a little pricey, but I absolutely love them. The best way to describe them is that they’re magic. Turn them on and constant noises like jet engines almost completely disappear and variable noises like people talking or a baby crying are greatly reduced. They’re wireless (no chords to mess with) so they automatically pair with your phone or tablet. Flip them on to watch a movie or listen to music and because the aircraft noise is being cancelled out, you don’t need to crank up the volume to hear. They also work great when you’re trying to sleep on the plane or even when you’re at home and want a little peace and quiet.
Anker portable charger: Our phones have become indispensable travel companions. When I hiked the Grand Canyon last year, my cell phone was my camera, camcorder, pedometer, trip organizer (via TripIt) and, not least, an actual phone in case of emergency. Most trips last longer than your cell battery, however, and you’re not always close to a power source. Whether you’re at an airport with no charging stations or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, this portable charger works great. It has two USB ports so you can charge multiple devices at once and it contains enough power to recharge my iPhone 7 times. Anker was founded by former Google employees and has quickly become the world leader in mobile charging by doing a few things very well. They have chargers in multiple sizes and make great (long and strong) phone cables as well if you don’t like the short one that came with your phone.
Amazon Kindle: Whether at the airport or at the beach, there’s usually plenty of time to read while traveling. Rather than taking a book or two, I just bring my Kindle, complete with my Kindle library as well as any books I borrow from my local library and deliver to my Kindle before the trip. It’s light, holds thousands of books and has a charge that lasts for weeks. I prefer the basic e-reader version because there’s no glare, but if you’d rather have the Kindle that’s also a tablet, the Kindle Fire is a good option as well.
Safe (and enjoyable) travels!
Joe
Note: Since I have my own books for sale on Amazon, I am a part of their Amazon Affiliate program. Some of the links above are affiliate links, which simply means that if you buy a product after clicking one of the links, Amazon (at no additional cost to you) will pay me a small commission that I use to help cover the costs of this site. That’s not why I recommend the products, of course, but I wanted to make you aware of it.
by Joe Hearn | Aug 25, 2016 | Pursuits, Travel
“Oh. Sorry. You’re on the wrong side of the mountain.”
That was the response I got when I called the park ranger help line. The number was conveniently posted on a big “You Are Here” board which I got out of my car to examine because it happened to be right next to the “Dead End” sign that marked the end of the road.
This new information presented a problem because my wife and I were planning to climb Mt. St. Helens and we needed as much daylight as possible to do it.
It was 10 am and we were at the aforementioned dead end, staring at the familiar crater in the distance of the mountain that erupted in 1980 with the force of 21,000 atomic bombs. We spent the previous night at Paradise Inn on Mt. Rainier and got up early for the trip to St. Helens. It’s only 35 miles as the crow flies, but three hours for any non-bird transportation that needs to follow the winding roads. Unfortunately, my poor navigation skills would now add another hour and a half to that.
Oh well. Back in the car. If it sounds like we didn’t spend much time planning this excursion, it’s because we didn’t spend much time planning this excursion. We didn’t even know we’d be climbing it until the week prior. The park service only allows 100 people per day to climb the mountain and all of the required permits had sold out months earlier. I found a website where people sell or trade permits they can’t use and kept checking for sales that matched our dates. At the last minute, an engineer from Nike decided that climbing an active volcano with his kids might not be as fun as it sounds, so I bought his permits.
We made it to the other side of the mountain by about 11:30 and found Climbers Bivouac, which is the beginning of the Monitor Ridge Route that leads to the top. As I put our information into the book at the trailhead, I saw, not surprisingly, that everyone else on the mountain that day had left hours earlier. “We won’t make it to the top,” I told my wife. “We’re starting too late. Better that we get that through our heads now.”
But as we started through the forest, I kept checking my watch and realized that we were making great time. The hike is 10 miles round trip and the first two miles of that are fairly easy. Then you break through the tree line and come to a boulder field that slows things to a crawl. Literally. We spent much of the next several miles and 2,500 vertical feet on all fours crawling over boulders the size of Volkswagens. I quit checking my watch because it was too discouraging.
The boulder field
At one point, we crossed paths with a climber on his way down and I was bemoaning our late start. He assured me that we were almost to the ash field. That’s the last mile and 1,000 feet of vertical. As a veteran of the St. Helens climb, he said we were lucky today because recent snow melt had compressed the ash and we would only sink to our ankles with each step. “Lucky us,” I said. “How far do you normally sink?”
“Sometimes shins. Sometimes your knees,” he said. “It’s usually one step forward, sink, slide back a half step.”
I tried not to make eye contact with my wife. When the climber moved on, I suggested we stop for a snack. “This is usually the part of the trip where I apologize for getting people into this,” I said. I told her if we tried for the top, we’d be coming down in the dark and then we had a four hour drive back to home base in Sequim. Best case scenario, we get home really late. Worst case scenario, we spend the night sleeping in the boulder field.
“It would stink to get this far and not see the view from the top,” she said. On we went.
We made it through the boulders and, sure enough, the ash was only ankle deep. Normally, that would have been a discouraging development, but now that I knew how much worse it could be, we were happy. Perspective is a funny thing. Unfortunately, there were no switchbacks on the route so the climb was very steep and slow.
Going down looked much more fun. The trail was bracketed in by two snow fields and several people who had summited earlier were glissading down the snow pack, using ice axes to slow their descent.
The ash field.
We kept on and finally (FINALLY!), the terrain leveled off and we were at the summit. It was a clear day and the views were incredible. Mt. Hood was visible to the South and it felt like you could almost reach out and touch Mt. Rainier to the North. Inside the crater is a bulging dome that is growing every year as the volcano below churns.
After taking some photos and enjoying the view, we donned our packs and started down. The descent went much faster, but the sun had set and it was nearly dark by the time we reached our car. We made it home in the small hours of the morning and crawled into bed still covered in sweat and ash, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Beautiful scenery. Time with my wife. A sense of accomplishment. A fun memory. Those are some of the things that make life great.
Trip Details:
Want to climb St. Helens? Here are some of the details:
Distance: 10 miles round trip
Average completion time: 8-10 hours
Summit elevation: 8,363 feet. It was 1,300 feet higher before the blast.
Elevation gain from trailhead: 4,500 feet
Gear: Good boots, poles, food, water, layered clothing, sunscreen, etc.
Planning Info: Here
Permits: Get one here
If they’re sold out: Try here.
A panoramic of my wife at the crater rim. For scale, there is another person on the far right of the pic.
